ChatGPT adds advertising to lower-tier plans to drive revenue

An ongoing discussion, both within and outside the tech community, has revolved around how and when OpenAI, currently valued at $500 billion, will generate profit. Advertising offers the single guaranteed method to do so. The AI giant appears to be pursuing this strategy in the short term, announcing this week that it will introduce limited ads to certain ChatGPT users.

In a blog post, OpenAI announced on Friday that it is beginning to test advertisements in the U.S. for its free and newly launched “Go” tiers. The Go accounts, which became available globally on Friday, cost $8 per month. According to OpenAI, this move is intended to maintain free access to the platform.

It will also generate revenue from users who are not yet ready for a subscription. Importantly, the company’s more expensive subscription levels—Pro, Plus, Business, and Enterprise—will remain ad-free for the time being.

ChatGPT will display the ads at the bottom of a user’s conversation and target them based on the discussion topic. Users will have some control, as they will be able to dismiss ads. They can also view explanations for why specific ads are shown. Furthermore, users can turn off personalization, which should prevent targeted ads. The company has also pledged not to serve ads to users it believes are under 18.

OpenAI says that ChatGPT will maintain “answer independence,” meaning that despite the incorporation of advertising, those ads will not influence the answers the chatbot serves to users. The company has also promised not to sell users’ data to advertisers.

This approach could pay off in two ways. For users of the free and Go tiers, the company clearly stands to make a substantial amount of ad revenue. At the same time, there will necessarily be specific users who relish the app but don’t appreciate the ads. This could drive an uptick in subscriptions to the platform’s more costly accounts.

OpenAI also wants everybody to know that it is only sticking ads in its chatbot to help the world. In its blog post on Friday, the company promised that its “pursuit of advertising is always in support of” its mission: that AGI “benefits all of humanity.”